shoshntosh

i've done several transatlantic flights with wee ones, both alone and with my husband (which was, er, dare i say even more difficult??). my advice is to pack: 1. several pairs of cheap earplugs (for handing round to those is neighbouring seats and for yourself) 2. lots of cash for beer/wine/your tipple of choice 3. snacks, and lots of them, but especially those that take a long time to eat we also sometimes (esp as they got older) a little bag of gifts, and they got something from the bag every two or three hours (or as necessary) to distract/divert/stop the madness of walking up and down the aisle for hours on end. SLEEP TONS BEFORE YOU FLY. good luck & godspeed! shosh

oh my god SO glad i read this, am going to give my mother-in-law an extra hug this christmas because only now do i realise how amazing she is!

where on tyrrell road?

This Saturday, 5th December, from 11am - 4pm. Lots of great craft stalls for grown-ups as well as fun, festive activities and games for children (including Santa's Grotto). Entrance is: ?2 for adults ?1 concessions 50p children

sylvie thanks for posting your experience. i have always been one of the "it won't happen to me" types (because i believe i am strong, aware, carrying a completely sh*te bag anyway, etc etc) but now i realise that random chance/bad luck has a LOT to do with it. i will be more careful. glad you are okay. shosh

dear kate i was the teenage stepchild of two people in their thirties (both my parents remarried younger partners) and i'm sure i was no joy. i needed some alone time with my real parents and felt like i never got it. would it be possible for your husband to have some time alone with his daughters? it wasn't that i didn't like the step-parents exactly... it's just that i preferred my own parents and felt like i ALREADY got half-time with them and then that half-time was further compromised by having to share them with someone else. being a teenager is really difficult under the best of circumstances. the way my six year old speaks to me sometimes... my god, i am dreading it! however, someone very wise once told me that they key with teenager's attitudes is to give them wide berth (i.e. basically try to ignore/accept their attitude) because a) trying to change it will lead to more conflict and b) they will eventually come back to you (when they are no longer victims of their hormones). i really feel for you. when i was 29 i dated a guy for a year who had three daughters. it was a challenge. the good news is that they are now adults and have recently sent me facebook friends' requests. i'm delighted! good luck shosh xx

dear heidi hi i'm so sad to hear of your awful and traumatic labour. i had a similarly bad experience (tho not at kings) and we complained and did receive a verbal apology. but that did not help... i actually think i was left feeling really traumatised (almost like post traumatic stress, though not that severe) and angry about my experience. only two things helped resolve those feelings: 1) talking to a counsellor about it and 2) giving birth a second time (this time in the comfort of my own home). finally laid many ghosts to rest... and am only telling you this in the hopes that you don't underestimate how profound and lingering your feelings about your birth experience can be. congratulations, btw, on your gorgeous boy. xx

but now i think YOU are missing the point. the reason i was uncomfortable watching that was because she was so uncomfortable and because she wanted to die. i'm sorry, too, about your mum's experience, which sounds like it wasn't very pleasant either. i wish we had had a switch we could have flipped.

what if, when we die, we (as in our "souls" or our "essence" or whatever you want to call it... our "spirits"??) go exactly where we think they will go?? what if those who believe in heaven go to heaven. and those who believe in heaven but deep down think they belong in hell go to hell? and those who believe in nothing end up as nothing? and those who believe in reincarnation are reincarnated? is that possible? just as likely as one of those answers being right, i suspect. as for me, i'm with the 10,000 Maniacs: "Think I'll just let the mystery be." (not sure where that will leave my soul). but maybe it's possible, too, that our deep beliefs are not always reflected by our surface intellect or our politics?

i am disturbed that people are comparing assisted suicide to capital punishment. as keef quite rightly pointed out... they are two very different things indeed. i am dead(!) against capital punishment (and yes, please, someone, have mercy and start the thread) but my examples of assisted suicide (above) are NOT "black and white hypotheticals". they are real. and, hugenot, i don't see where you get off deciding that we need to accept that there are more people who would abuse such a law than benefit from it? is this a fact? and if so, where do you derive such interesting "facts"? of course there will be abusers, as there are of any laws. but as with most laws the balance needs to be considered. and on balance i feel that a change in our attitudes towards terminal illness/end of life would benefit our society enormously. mainly in that we would feel supported and empowered to make such a terrifically difficult decision for ourselves should the need arise. watch your 56 yr old mother vomit diahharrea and writhe in pain and then let's discuss it again.

we recently had this very situation come up. a close, lifelong family friend was severely injured in an ATV accident. he was left paralysed from the neck down, breathing on a ventilator. he was approaching 60 -- and before the accident very fit, and a farmer, who spent his days doing physical activity (which he loved). he decided rather quickly, after the accident, that he didn't want to live. he asked the doctors to remove the ventilator and they did so. he died, just as he wished. in some ways, though, he was lucky. because asking to have the ventilator removed did NOT invalidate his life insurance. when my friend's 78 yr old grandfather shot himself after suffering from debilitating parkinson's disease for years... there was no payout for his family. sorry to make it about money, but for god's sake let these people die with dignity. god knows, having watched my own mother suffer horribly through the end stages of cancer, with her begging us to help her end it... if we would have been able to do so legally, we would have. it's called compassion. and in my view it's barbaric that we don't have assisted suicide.

surely it depends on the criminal and the crime. like what panda boy said. one thing is for certain though: they really shouldn't ever get a hero's welcome.

hi we've just had our third family holiday at a featherdown farm and it was awesome -- so relaxing and the kids were in heaven. you can check out their website. but word of caution, obviously the experience varies from farm to farm. we loved two but were less fond of the other one (feel free to ask me in a PM). cornwall farm (boswarthen) especially good (though very far away!). also we spent a week camping at an organic farm in southeast cornwall called keveral and it was really cool. shosh

dear sean i am thrilled to have discovered this thread today (after several weeks on holiday). i am so infuriated by so many of the views of people in the US that i actually wrote an OpEd on the piece with a friend at the Washington Post (i'll send it to you separately if you wish). as someone who has lived extensively in both countries, i feel well placed to compare the healthcare. i can assure you that the NHS does just as good a job -- in some ways better, and in some ways worse. on the whole though, i think the point (best made in the Independent earlier this week) is that an entire swathe of the US population (the "right") is just plain mean. in every definition of the word. unfortunately my own family, most of whom live in texas, fall into this category. their political views, including those on healthcare (and most certainly on Obama) are mean-spirited, selfish, greedy, and often utterly devoid of any kind of compassion. that anyone in this day and age would consider postal service and education a god-given right BUT NOT HEALTHCARE is completely bonkers in my view. i spent 30 years of my life in america. i was born there. love it. and dream of going back someday. but make no mistake, most american republicans hate poor people. plain and simple. would that it were otherwise... shosh

i've actually never experienced this but i wonder if my recent black cab journey has anything to do with why they won't come down here. having hailed the cab near picaddilly (where i'd apparently been on a bender), i spent the better part of the last two miles asking him to pull over so i could be sick. apparently girls down here in east dulwich can't hold their liquor.

description: thin, tall, about 20 yrs old maybe, light-skinned black guy. facial hair, like a thin goatee type. wearing a grey tracksuit, cotton jersey (not nylon poly shell suit), trainers, hair very big and bushy, like a long afro with a ponytail at the top. as i say, he didn't seem on drugs (like other dodgy guys we've seen around here) he seemed completely normal. oh, and one more thing... esp for those living on tyrrell road. has anyone else wondered about the "painter" who has been painting the outside of some houses/flats near the garage (barry road end)? because not only has he offered me drugs and pirated DVDs, i suspect that he is watching our comings and goings. thoughts?

well, sort of. i was sitting here at my very desk typing last thursday morning around 9.15am when i heard our fence gate click (which means someone should be approaching our door). when no one rang the bell i popped my head to out to discover a man breaking into our shed (which is in front of our house, we live on tyrrell road just off barry rd). coincidentally my husband's bike was stolen from the very same shed at the very same time the week before, so i have no doubt the guy was coming back to get my bike. i think he was well shocked to see my in my dressing gown with bedhair shouting "what the h*ll are you doing? get the 8%@^ out of here!" because he rushed right past me and hopped our low fence before taking off. police came and dusted for prints etc. but have already closed the case due to insufficient evidence. (big surprise there). i know these burglaries are so commonplace it's almost boring to post a thread about it (and it's not like he exposed his cockle or anything), but i just wanted to remind people how brazen these crooks can be. QUARTER PAST NINE ON A THURSDAY MORNING, JUST OUTSIDE MY FRONT DOOR? that is b.o.l.d. p.s. for some reason i thought a burglar would look all hopped up on drugs, but he was just a regular-looking guy

a strange man just gave my four year old son a pirated copy of DUMBO outside my house. is that weird, or not? i should not have accepted it, should i? (i was slightly unnerved)

i have tried to initiate a neighbourhood watch scheme several times on my street, with police never returning my calls, including safer neighbourhoods teams (passed me from peckham to east dulwich to nunhead back to east dulwich). i also tried to become a street warden for southwark... those requests also went unresponded to. i gave up in the end. am having an alarm system installed (for which we took out a second -- or is it third? -- mortgage). as for being mugged... yeah, well, i am hyper conscious when walking alone at night (and i do walk alone at night). i ALWAYS wear sensible shoes so i can run, kick, etc. no high heels for me! hardly ever carry a handbag, never talk on my mobile or wear my iPod, and i move fast. there's a lot you can do as an individual to prevent yourself becoming a target (though i accept some things are simply beyond our control), but i do wish that we were doing more as a community. we are inviting all our neighbours round soon for a little get together so we know eachother, know who might vulnerable (older people living alone) and can look out for each other a bit. it's a start. i have no idea whether the crime is getting worse around here, or it's just being mentioned more on this forum, etc. but i do know that crime tends to go up when the economy is bad.

tell my friends and colleagues where i live?? are you INSANE???

what wigglebear said on page two of this thread. and i thought the english weren't overly dramatic... you know, stiff upper lip and all that...

thanks very much for this, sounds great.

ratty Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > This is something that puzzles me. I know of no > one who would not hand in a purse or mobile phone > if found, and I have done so many times, so, why > is it that when my wife loses one or the other do > they never ever come back? i find that interesting too. i also don't know a single male who visits prostitutes, and yet... there seems to be plenty of business for them. i can only conclude that either i a) circulate amongst particularly nice and moral people and b) that things -- including people -- are not always what they seem. i don't feel smug (because all my friends are moral) nor do i feel that i lack faith in the goodness of humanity (because they are all just pretending to be moral). i just see things as they are: grey and complex.

i did once spot him reading mariella frostrup's column, which i feel crosses the line into my territory. and he does seem to know an awful lot about sarah harding. shall be taking me grazias to the loo with me from now forward.

"beef curtains"????? that's even WORSE than "gut stick" where do you learn these phrases, or do you make them up?